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The Murdered Women of Juarez

Democracy and Society Drug War Gender Equality January 20, 2011 0Likes 7Comments

Marisela Escobedo’s life changed forever in August 2008 when her 16-year-old daughter Rubi failed to come home. What was left of Rubi’s body was found months later in a dump — 39 pieces of charred bone.

Rubi became one more macabre statistic in Ciudad Juarez’s nearly two-decade history of femicide. The murder of young women, often raped and tortured, brought international infamy to the city long before it became the epicenter of the Calderon drug war and took on the added title of murder capital of the world.

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War Crimes against Women: A Private Hell

Democracy and Society Gender Equality May 5, 2010 0Likes 0Comments

It is easy to think of impunity as a sin of omission. The hand not raised in protest appears genteel alongside the hand stained with the blood of the victim. Yet we learned from the testimonies of women on the frontlines of battle for gender justice that impunity not only perpetuates crimes against women, it teaches generation after generation how to continue the practice. Laura Carlsen writes from the International Gender Justice Dialogue in Mexico.

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Special Updater on Violence Against Women in the Americas: Honduras: Violations of Womens’ Rights, Abortion in Argentina and Mexico, Gender in Workplace

Democracy and Society Gender Equality November 25, 2009 0Likes 0Comments

As we take stock of the situation in the Americas several situations jump out. The first is the massive violations of women’s human rights in Honduras under the coup regime. In this Special Issue of the Updater we present the full report presented before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.

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Women’s Health in Nicaragua: The Need for a Secular State

Gender Equality Human Rights March 9, 2004 0Likes 0Comments

Nicaragua’s population policy has been set out in two documents prepared by two successive governments. The first of these two documents, the “national population policy” was issued in September 1996, toward the end of Violeta Chamorro’s government. Jointly prepared by UN agencies and various government ministries, the population itself was not consulted in designing the policy.

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Casa Amiga: Leading the Fight to Protect Women in Ciudad Juárez

Gender Equality December 3, 2002 0Likes 2Comments

A major wave of layoffs in the once-thriving maquiladora industry of Ciudad Juárez has left thousands scrambling to make ends meet. Among the most vulnerable to this economic implosion are thousands of working-class women. As the maquiladora sector has contracted, Casa Amiga, the only domestic violence and rape crisis center in the city of nearly 2 million, has experienced a dramatic increase in the number of battered women coming in for help. Despite its overwhelming workload, the staff of Casa Amiga continues to provide much-needed services to women in Juárez, one day at a time, case by case.

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